


The Bad Sleep Well - 4 - White

by sharkcar



Series: The Bad Sleep Well [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Concord Dawn, Genocide, Mandalorian, Mandalorian Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 09:40:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19765543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkcar/pseuds/sharkcar
Summary: An imagining of the lives of clones after the Clone Wars. Just some simple men, making their ways in the universe, in all their tragicomic glory.1- Clouds- Cody bumps up against the Mandalorian Way2- Snow- Rex explores a mysterious ruin3- Nothing at All- Wolffe and Gregor have their hands full





	1. Clouds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fall of Concord Dawn

Concord Dawn  
  
On their way to the farm Cody relaxed while the guys from the “Intelligence Service” piloted the vessel low and with minimal systems. To pay them back for making him listen to their attempts at comedic musical theater, Cody decided to read to them from his unpublished memoirs. This particular chapter was on jet pack use.  
  
\--  
  
“Jet packs are associated with Mandalorian culture, however their availability was always restricted. They require special training and the equipment is expensive. So it’s not something just anyone can have access to, never mind master. Mandalorian kids who come from rich families had their own jet packs to train with from the time they were young, other people didn’t. Without training, they are useless. You kind of have to inherit it. Therefore, jet packs are a mode of aristocratic expression.  
  
“Mandalorian elite knew that their arms couldn’t be taken up against them. The tech is extremely hazardous. They take some getting used to, they’re all forward momentum, it’s dangerous to try to hold still to aim, so you have to be able to calculate trajectories trigonometrically. It takes a lot of practice. Jet packs were actually the thing that had the most casualties in the clone academy that killed or injured brothers, rendering them defective for military service.  
  
“Yet all clones had that equipment and training, which somewhat democratized the skill. And our training was intensive. Forced attention for hours a day. Simulator runs in the thousands. Tons of actual flight hours logged. Trainers who were paid experts. By the time the war started, some of us had the skills as specialists.”  
  
\--  
  
Cody’s foster sons were all ethnic Mando, but certainly not aristocrats. Instead of being offended, they laughed at this section.  
  
“Do you still have your jet pack?” Sh'ehn asked.  
  
“Of course I do,” Cody answered, “Do you know how much one of those things is worth?”  
  
Stabbi cut to the chase, “Who gets it when you die?”  
  
Cody raised his eyebrows, “Haven’t you been listening? You’d kill yourself.” Cody was certain these clowns would only sell it.  
  
“You just ramble in places,” Goran offered literary criticism.  
  
“I had a page count to reach,” Cody admitted dryly.  
  
“So what happened with this little opus?” Sh'ehn asked.  
  
“The publisher decided to terminate the contract. Apparently my ramblings were not going to be a bestseller in the Empire. They were hoping for a salacious tell-all about the Jedi Order. But I found I just didn’t have it in me. I was tired of being associated with Jedi. Some brothers acted proud of what we’d done, but I didn’t really want to talk about it after the Purge Trials. Being proud of killing someone just seemed tacky to me,” Cody admitted.  
  
“You mean you’ve never been proud of the people you’ve killed? Not the scum?” Goran asked.  
  
Stabbi did a Cody impression, “That’s a chore, like trash removal.”  
  
“I admit, some are more satisfying than others. But I was trying to build a public persona without being in other people’s shadows. So, my public face found it tacky, because I knew THEY would find it tacky. I didn’t want the Empire’s citizens to see me as tacky. The publisher wanted gossip, I wanted…” he indicated the memoir, “Whatever this is, I guess. My own voice.”  
  
“You thought people would like the real you…but they didn’t,” Goran laughed, “You really cared what the Sheevies thought?” ‘Sheevie’ meant ‘Imperial’. ‘Sheeving Bastards’ was also acceptable.  
  
Cody shrugged, “You could say that. They paid me eighteen thousand credits to get out of the contract, so I considered it a win. Had to pay half of it in taxes, though, so Sheev got what was coming to him, which was fair, since I think they only gave me the book deal because he told them to as a way to stroke my fragile ego,” Cody flipped a few pages to find a section, “Here is why it’s relevant,”  
  
\--  
  
“I was given special training from none other than famed jet pack master, Cabur Nexo Zyne of the Protectors of Concord Dawn. His family had been one of the founding members of the Protectors and had served in the Royal Guard in Sundari for centuries. He once taught me a technique that was used in the ancient Jedi Wars. Using a jet pack to reach the center of the Jedi Force throwing technique known as the Whirlwind. That’s where a Jedi throws air and debris centrifugally to counter a threat by air.  
  
“”Don’t match speed with the Whirlwind, don’t go against it,” he’d warned, “thread the needle. Land and let the jets send a wave of disruption through the air. That blows it apart from the inside, you land on your feet.”  
  
“”What’s the point in learning such a thing, Cabur? We’ll be fighting with the Jedi?” I asked.  
  
“'He raised a finger, “Knowledge is knowledge.”  
  
““Is it true? That we are part of some cosmic war between light and dark that the Jedi are fighting?” I’d asked.  
  
“He told me, “I was raised a strict follower of the Resol’nare, but I know not to take doctrinal quibbles very seriously, especially when it discourages your own search for answers. Good people have a way of knowing the right side. But what you can be is ready for anything.”  
  
“”We’ll be following the Jedi, but the Republic and the Jedi, they aren’t the same thing,” I reasoned, “We were taught that loyalty to the Republic is a higher order of belief, since even the Jedi, serve it.”  
  
““Well, what do you feel?” Cabur frowned seriously.  
  
“”I’m here for a purpose. Nothing else matters. I don’t want to be self-indulgent,” I answered, my love for the Republic swelling in my heart. “I love my family, sir, as you do yours,” I looked at the picture he had. A house on a farm, a happy father, a son with a hover chair, and a wife smiling. Cabur Zyne was working on Kamino to be able to afford prosthetic legs for his son.,“I…believe you are a good person, sir.”  
  
““I try to be,” he told me.  
  
“”I do too,” I answered, “We will join the war, when we’re worthy. I want to be worthy. For what that means, I will take my cues from my betters.””  
  
\--  
  
“Well that was some maudlin garbage,” Sh’ehn criticized.  
  
“Pandering to your patron much?” Goran offered another literary criticism.  
  
“What gave that away?” Cody asked him sarcastically.  
  
Goran responded immediately, “You don’t think anybody’s your better.”  
  
\--  
  
Since Alis was part of Zyne’s household, she lived at the central farmstead of his village up on a plateau. Cody didn’t know how to get in contact with her. He wondered how Rex had managed it. Mandalorians didn’t usually let their cadets do things like go off world unsupervised, or make friends outside their House.  
  
Jango Fett had been a Protector once. Therefore clones could be considered to be part of the Protectors’ legacy. They weren’t one that was wanted.  
  
In Mandalorian culture, to challenge a leader was acceptable, but the honorable method was by one on one combat. Not shooting people in the back. Cody’s case was famous to the scattered exiles from Mandalore. Even though General Kenobi was a Jedi, and so a traditional enemy of the Mando, he was a historical object of fascination because of his relationship with a certain Duchess. Cody was therefore considered a special shame on the house for being dishonorable to such a romantic figure. Anyone who would have killed Commander Cody would have become famous. There was no way they would let one of their own go with him, even if she was his family. It was going to be thorny.  
  
“Why can’t we wear our armor? We look like hicks,” Stabbi complained.  
  
Cody shook his head, “We’re not here to attract attention. Ideally, the fewer people we have interactions with the better.”  
  
“Won’t you be recognized?” Sh’ehn asked.  
  
Cody cocked an eyebrow, “Now boys, what have I always said?”  
  
“People only see the clone,” Stabbi did his Cody impression.  
  
\--  
  
Cody recognized the Zyne homestead even before he saw it. The terrain was exactly as his old trainer had described. A high endorheic plateau, a bowl shaped formation surrounded by mountains at a high altitude. An extinct volcano cone that became a bowl that kept water, the bottom of the lake had then been formed of sediments from the fossils from the lake, millions of years after it had long since dried up. The farms of the members of Clan Zyne were set equidistant apart, in the middle of their flat fields. It was morning. Cody felt like he was going back in time. Every barn was decorated with painted carvings, the caves in the mountains were filled with the bones and ashes of generations of their dead. Stands of fruit trees here and there were gnarled with age.  
  
They set the ship down in the center, near the largest house and three or four communal barns. As the ramp lowered, Cody and the “Intelligence Service” walked off towards the house.  
  
They were met by the end of four blasters.  
  
“Stay where you are!” a voice from under a T-visored helmet shouted. Two men in armor stood before them.  
  
Cody put his hands up and stood still, pronouncing in perfect Mando’a he’d learned from the former lord of the plantation, “I’m a friend!”  
  
“How do we know that? Your shuttle is Imperial. Have you come from the Empire?” a second T-visor asked.  
  
“What? No,” Cody did a placating gesture with his hands and answered back, “Those things break down easily, I got it used at surplus auction.”  
  
“Tor, don’t you know a jang when you see one,” the first man holstered his blasters and took off his helmet, “Are you Alis’s ‘uncle’? She ran away to find you.”  
  
“Jang” was a mild derogatory term for a Fett clone, Cody was well aware.  
  
Cody recognized the man as Zyne’s son, Yustapir, and when he glanced down, he saw the prosthetic legs.  
  
“I’ve come to offer my help,” Cody tried, “Out of my respect for your father.”  
  
“No one can help us, Alor’ad,” Yustapir shook his head.  
  
‘Alor’ad’ meant Captain. They definitely thought he was Rex.  
  
“The Empire sent that chakaaryc Gar Saxon after us. All of the Protectors are gone. Cabur Rau is missing. We know they’ll be here soon,” the other man removed his helmet, awkwardly because he refused to put down the guns. He was a younger man with his blonde hair partially shaven.  
  
“Do you need your families evacuated? I have a ship,” Cody offered.  
  
“We’re not giving up our planet without a fight, even if we have to die defending it,” the younger man answered.  
  
“Then what will be left of you?” Cody nearly pleaded.  
  
“That’s none of your business, clone,” the young man aimed a blaster in a show of machismo.  
  
“Tor!” Yustapir scolded, “This man is not here to harm us.” He turned to Cody, “Sorry…CT- Seventy-five-sixty-seven, is it?”  
  
“Sure,” Cody lied.  
  
“Look, See-tee…” Yustapir began.  
  
“Rex,” Cody interrupted gently, just as Rex would have.  
  
“Right,” Yustapir shrugged, “Listen, we’re grateful for the favor, but we don’t need any clone help, this is a Mandalorian war for real Mando.”  
  
“But the Empire is backing them. They threw honor out the window,” Cody interjected.  
  
“Doesn’t matter if they’re dishonorable, we must not be,” Yustapir insisted.  
  
Never mind that Rau was reportedly taking money from the Empire as well. Yustapir’s insignia were those of the Protectors’ reserve force. Not being a member of the elite forces, Yustapir probably had no idea what the leadership was doing. The grandson, Tor, wore the uniform of a cadet, like Alis would have, but Tor had the jetpack, because he was aristocracy. Cody thought it looked poorly maintained.  
  
“So Alis is dishonorable? She did come to ask for my assistance,” Cody told him.  
  
“It’s different for her. For her to ask isn’t wrong, she can say she didn’t know any better. But we have the right to refuse clone help. By the way, where is Alis? Didn’t she come back with you?” Yustapir turned the tables.  
  
“Uh…she went looking for some other brothers. You know, the rumors about the colony in Abrion somewhere?” Cody was fishing for information of what they knew of him.  
  
“That ge’hutuun Cody?” the younger guy seemed horrified at the prospect, “He’s a demagolka!”  
  
So Cody was still the worst kinds of criminal to them.  
  
“Yes, I…uh…heard she has family there,” Cody tried. If they were lying and she was hiding somewhere, Cody thought that revelation might bring her out.  
  
The young guy looked nauseated, “I heard Commander Cody went absolutely savage, running a tribe of head hunters, dismembering people!”  
  
Cody thought that was unfair, he’d done that once and it was more than warranted.  
  
“They’re interbreeding with Weequay to create some orc army,” Tor went on.  
  
Cody thought that was a little specist.  
  
“Kidnapping kids to serve as sex slaves!” Tor raged.  
  
Now that one was just untrue. Everyone was breaking people out of detainment, men, women and children. Giving them a place to go wasn’t kidnapping.  
  
“Yeah,” Cody said, “Not like me. Good old Rex.”  
  
“Well, independent mercenary is at least an honorable profession,” Yustapir defended.  
  
Cody thought it was strange that Rex was not much better than a bounty hunter, while he was himself a father, a warrior, and a community leader. And the Mandalorians still liked Rex better.  
  
“I understand if you don’t want my help, but at least would it be alright to wait here until Alis comes back? Just to explain to her that I tried?” Cody thought he might be able to speak with her and even Rex if she found him.  
  
“It’s your risk, Alor’ad,” Yustapir shrugged, “Come on up to the house,” Yustapir waved, “Mom will talk to you.”  
  
Tor clarified defiantly as they walked, “My mom’s father died in the Clone War. Worked for the Republic as a fighter pilot, like Rau and the others. He got shot down over Cato Neimoidia after those clones turned on General Koon. The Empire never gave us a credit in compensation. My mother grew up practically starving. Those clones were acquitted, but I know the truth.”  
  
Cody bet he didn’t.  
  
“You clones always wanted the Empire. You were just waiting for your moment when you didn’t need the Jedi anymore. As far as I’m concerned, clones founded the Empire. There is a special place in dar’yaim for jangs such as you,” Tor self importantly imitated the Core accent, but badly. Youths of the era sometimes did that as a way to mock self-important Core assholes. Cody always found it entertaining before, especially when Skywalker used to do it to Kenobi, but now he was on the receiving end. It felt weird.  
  
Cody hoped they hadn’t forced Alis to become engaged to this twerp. Some clans were backwards like that. Raising foster children for potential breeding stock. His own foster children were walking in a rough triangle, discreetly reconnoitering the compound for any threats. Cody was usually under threat where he went, so the three had fallen into a kind of routine providing cover. People seemed to be disinterested in them, mostly scrambling here and there to secure stores of food and weaponry. They were preparing for siege conditions.  
  
Yustapir clarified, “Tor is trying on teenage defiance at the moment. Seriously, son, dial it back. Save it up for the real fight.”  
  
“I don’t approve of clones, Father. I don’t even know why you let Alis see this man, he looks like nothing but an old lecher to me,” Tor didn’t mind saying in front of Cody and the other men.  
  
“This man is a war hero. Haven’t you ever heard the story of how he repelled the Separatists at the Battle of Kamino?” Yustapir began.  
  
Cody was hurt. He was with Rex through that entire battle. Yet he was supposed to be a child raping demagolka.  
  
“Or his heroics during the Extraction on Lola Sayu?” Yustapir continued as they walked, the “Intelligence Service” in his wake, snickering all the way.  
  
Cody was also on the Lola Sayu mission. He had helped plan it.  
  
“You know, I even heard he wrote the ‘Lament for Umbara’?” Yustapir misremembered.  
  
Cody had absolutely had it at this point. He written that goddamned poem! It was bad, like all of his Mandalorian style poems. But they were even crediting Rex with that? Rex never wrote goddamned poetry! Rex didn’t even know what accentual meter was!  
  
When they arrived at the house, the “Intelligence Service” were told they could go help out cutting and drying fruit for the emergency stores. Cody’s men had come from a city, they had no clue how to do farm work. It was going to be a blessed disaster, Cody thought. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to eat any.  
  
Yustapir, Tor, and Cody went inside the house through the main entrance. They were met by Cabur Lady Zyne, who was standing in the foyer. “I thought you might come, I saw you walking up. It’s good to meet you,” she unexpectedly embraced Cody. Tor rolled his eyes behind her back.  
  
“I’ve heard a lot about you, M’lady,” Cody told her truthfully.  
  
Lady Zyne handed him a holo-viewer and switched it on, “A gift. Nexo always talked fondly about his boys,” the holo-still showed a class of first year clones, in their uniforms from Zyne’s hand to hand combat club, “I’m sorry I can’t tell one from the other, you all just look like different pictures of Jango to me. Is one of them you?”  
  
Cody saw himself standing on one side of Zyne. His brother Bly on the other. They looked so young and small then. Cody swallowed acid that had suddenly risen from his stomach. Then he cleared his throat, “I studied with Angus Trask,” Cody pointed at one of the assistant coaches, who had supervised Rex’s training.  
  
“Aw, Angus,” she switched off the viewer and closed Cody’s hand over it in a gesture of gift giving, “A shame about him.”  
  
Cody knew Trask had been killed by the Shadow Collective in Sundari.  
  
“Alis was just a little girl when she came here. Nexo told me he had received an anonymous tip about some orphans from the Siege of Mandalore working in a sweatshop on Tiprin. Was that from you?” Lady Zyne asked.  
  
“Yes,” Cody was able to answer truthfully. But he was willing to let Rex have credit for that if it helped him get information, “Wards of the Imperial state are often sent to workhouses to pay for their own upkeep. I knew the conditions in those places were bleak. I couldn’t help her, but I didn’t want her to grow up there.”  
  
“The children from that rescue were distributed among the different clans and Nexo felt that the tipster was asking him to look after her, so he brought Alis to us. She came here insisting that her mother had always told her to find her Uncle Rex. We thought she was making it up, but she kept drawing his picture, white armor with the blue jaig eyes and insisting that her mother and Rex had been in love once. Everyone was so surprised when Rau told us you’d actually shown up and confirmed it. Do you know where Fenn Rau is? Is he still alive? When is he coming back?”  
  
Fenn Rau was with Rex? Why hadn’t he come back to help rally the forces on Concord Dawn, Cody wondered. Did he even know yet what had happened?  
  
“Uh…” Cody tried to bluff, “I’m not sure, I have been busy for a while, so I haven’t been back to see him.”  
  
They sat down as a household member brought tihaar. Cody sat across from Lady Zyne on a stool in the customary position of a guest. Yustapir and Tor stood guard on either side of her chair. Cody kept his back straight.  
  
“My word,” she looked at Cody, “it’s so funny to see you. I bet you’re exactly what Jango would look like.”  
  
That offended Cody slightly, Jango never sat with his back straight, he ate the way most of his progeny did, hunched over the tray to make sure that if someone tried to take his food, he could stab them with a fork.  
  
“You knew Jango?” Cody had seen his clone template as he was growing up on Kamino, but only from afar.  
  
“Of course. He lived on the estate of the old Rau homestead. It’s nearby. My father’s family was from Clan Rau. I knew Jango when he was just a boy,” she actually sounded sentimental about him.  
  
“Are there any Fetts left?” Cody was curious. His heritage had become especially interesting to him since he’d become a father. “I mean besides Boba...”  
  
“That abomination?” Tor put in, making eye contact with Cody.  
  
Cody wanted to laugh. He felt the same way about that little bastard.  
  
\--  
  
While they waited, Yustapir offered to take Cody by the old Fett farmstead. He just wanted to see it. In the speeder on the way over, they chatted.  
  
“That’s a tough boy you’ve got there.” Cody tried to compliment him.  
  
“He’s full of piss, but losing his mother was hard on him. And having his old man be such a shame, I’ll never do any great deeds he can tell tales of. I guess he comes by his anger honestly,” Yustapir admitted.  
  
“It’s not about who your father is…” Cody started to quote a Mandalorian proverb.  
  
“Well, he’s a little young yet to be a father himself. Now I don’t know if he’ll get the time,” Yustapir shrugged.  
  
“Is there a young lady he has in mind?” Cody asked him directly, just like Rex would have.  
  
Yustapir seemed to think this was funny, “Who’d have him?”  
  
Cody breathed a sigh of relief, “Does Alis have a companion?”  
  
“You would probably know better than I would. She keeps most things to herself. Writes in her journal. She’s barely more than a teenager. What can you expect? She was excited to meet you, though. That’s why we let her see you. You know, because you could tell her about her mother. She’s wanted to find her mom for years,” Yustapir told him.  
  
“I’m sure the feeling is mutual,” Cody informed him in all sincerity.  
  
Yustapir went on, “I didn’t want to tell Alis, but I’m sure her mother is dead by now. Those Imperial prisons…nobody comes back from those. At least not in one piece.”  
  
\--  
  
The Fett farmstead was a normal pre-fab house, with the trapezoidal sections put together around a half court. The fields surrounding it were untended as the terrain went back over to weeds and scrub trees. It was hard land, too rocky to be very productive. The jungles near Cody's home on Rishi practically dropped food in your lap.  
  
They roamed the empty halls of the house, looking through the dusty remnants of the occupants’ possessions that still lay around here and there. A broken dish. A piece of moldy clothing. A rusty chair. Old beer bottles.  
  
“How long ago was Jango exiled?” Cody asked, taking the place in archaeologically.  
  
“About twelve years before the war. Thirty years ago, now more or less,” Yustapir kicked at some broken glass.  
  
Jango had been disavowed by the Mandalorians in the years before the clones’ creation. However, several of them had agreed to train the clones at his invitation. Like Yustapir’s father, many just needed the money.  
  
Cody went into what had obviously been a child’s room once, “Was Jango the last child to live here?”  
  
“He and his older sister Arla,” Yustapir remembered, “She mostly raised him, since his mother had passed.”  
  
On a small shelf were some illustrated storybooks. Cody held them up in askance, and Yustapir casually nodded permission. Cody took them with him.  
  
Cody looked around the dusty, broken remains of what Jango’s father had hoped for. Jango had abandoned this place to find something better for himself. Something better for his son.  
  
\--  
  
“Are you a father, Rex?” Yustapir asked him on the ride back.  
  
“Not that I know of,” that was a cagey answer, Cody realized. It made him sound like a whore mongering lowlife. He wasn’t being Wolffe, he was being Rex. Cody resolved to grumble more and point his finger for emphasis and say self-righteous things, “Uh, I mean, no.” Swing and a miss.  
  
“Well, Alis said she considers you like a father to her. Since you are her last connection to her mother. She wants to think her mother is alive. I know you’ve talked about looking for her together. But she had made oaths to the clan. And well…I suppose that’s over now. By the time she gets back, we’ll be toast. She deserves to have a family. Enough of this blood feud nonsense. My mother is releasing her from the Protectors, she can go where she wants,” Yustapir revealed.  
  
“Don’t your laws demand she seek revenge for you?” Cody knew they did.  
  
“Yes, and I’m telling you to tell her, she is absolved of that responsibility. She would only get herself killed. Our enemy has won. They have the strength of the Empire and they want to see us obliterated. It’s over. Give Alis a fresh start. She’s not even really one of us. If you can’t find her mother, maybe her dad? She said she thought he might still be on Coruscant.”  
  
Cody clenched his teeth, “He didn’t want her. He let her be taken to that workhouse,” Cody knew the whole story from Alis’ mother. He rankled at the thought that Rex had been reminiscing about his wife. Or that these people would rather Alis go and be with either Rex or that deadbeat than him. He was dying to tell the truth. He thought for a moment about revealing it to demonstrate that he respected Yustapir. Maybe then he could get this blessing he was receiving in error. But he just couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t get him shot in the back of the skull. Then Tor would have a deed his dad could be celebrated for.  
  
“Anyway, I guess you’ll need to be going soon. You can stay the night, but we’ll be doing watches, so I don’t suspect anyone will be getting any sleep,” Yustapir parked the speeder and they began walking towards the house.  
  
“You don’t have to be doomed. I have some friends who will take us in, I’m sure Cody will…” Cody could not stand to see what would happen to his friend’s home.  
  
“That’d be a disaster. My people think he is a monster. They would kamikaze the transport ship right into his village rather than go and live with that demagolka,” Yustapir admitted.  
  
“Well, then I guess I’ve done my best,” Cody threw up his hands. The time for sentiment was over. He had worked in black ops, where it is a crucial skill to know when to cut your losses and back away. They would rather die than accept his help. It was sad, really. He could have used people like Yustapir and his mother. People with experience. People who have known how wrong things can go. But Cody knew he had gotten all he could from them. His mission was over.  
  
Cody went over to the barn and told his men that they would be leaving after he said goodbye to Lady Zyne. They went to go and get the ship ready and run the checks. Their fruit drying supervisor thanked Cody for taking them with him.  
  
\--  
  
Lady Zyne was looking through some of Alis’s old drawings in her living room. She said Cody could keep them if he wanted. He knew her mother would want them. He felt like he needed the proof of how close he’d come. Cody looked though the pieces of paper, noting how similar the style was to that of his own little girls. They were her sisters, after all.  
  
Suddenly, there was a commotion outside. Cody ran onto the porch with the rest of the people. Lady Zyne came up beside him and put on her helmet. The T-visor turned in Cody’s direction, “You had better get out now.”  
  
“What can I do to help?” Cody unholstered his blaster. His jetpack was left at home, he realized.  
  
“I see lights from jet packs, about twenty! And ships,” a man looking through his helmet scope shouted from the porch.  
  
“Take a few of them out as you go!” Lady Zyne waved Cody away and ignited her jetpack, speeding off and firing weapons with both hands. Her technique was like some awe inspiring water dance, Cody thought. He hadn’t seen the artistry of the old masters in years.  
  
Cody ran towards his shuttle. Since it was an Imperial shuttle, It would be difficult for Saxon’s fighters to identify it as a target. They didn’t want to hit one of their allies. Before Saxon’s men realized it wasn’t with them, Cody’s ship would have a few minutes to get away.  
  
Cody ran across the yard, under rocket fire from the warriors in jetpacks, “Damnit,” he swore under his breath. He got pinned down beside an animal pen. He knelt on one knee and fired on one of the flying men. The blast hit him in the visor and he spiraled down and erupted in an explosion of earth as the pack blew a crater in the ground. Cody hoped Stabbi had seen that to get over his delusions of grandeur.  
  
Cody opened the animal pen and got some cover running with the shaaks. One was hit and fell down as Cody stepped away with the herd.  
  
Tor grappled with a Supercommando, who was all dressed in white in a strange modern hybrid of the Mandalorian armor and Stormtrooper. Another Supercommando headed their way to assist. Cody triangulated the shot and hit his leg. The commando cried out and veered into the fighting pair, knocking them apart. Tor was able to get shots in at his opponents. He looked Cody’s way for a moment, Cody nodded. Tor swooped off to fire on the incoming ships.  
  
Cody ran to the ramp of his shuttle, just in time to turn and watch Yustapir get his helmet knocked off and his forehead marked with a sizzling blaster burn. Tor screamed and went to protect his grandmother. The ramp raised and Cody’s shuttle took off, Cody manned the gun, while Sh’ehn flew evasive maneuvers past the incoming ships that were landing to overwhelm the plateau.  
  
Climbing into the night sky, Cody could see from the trasparisteel turret of the rear gun that the homestead of Cabur Zyne was going up in flames while fighters were being shot down by the figures in the Supercommando armor. Then the ship entered the layer of clouds above and the view went to white as if none of it had ever been.  
  
On the flight home, Cody found himself penciling in the margins of the books he’d found. Just absentminded doodles and lines of verse. Anything to keep himself distracted from that little voice in his head that told him that anything less than bringing Alis home was an epic failure.


	2. Snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rex does some detective work

Shimia  
  
“Skywalker Lives? Is that who’s behind this?” Kanan asked, “Wasn’t he your Jedi general?”  
  
Rex exhaled through his nose, “As much as rescuing people from hopeless places would be in keeping with his behavior, I can’t see him wanting to advertise like this.”  
  
“Really? Back at the Temple I always heard him described as cocky,” Kanan went up to the wall and touched the paint.  
  
“It was an act. Just something he did for fun. He’d be more likely to take on an alias or something to be funny. Like Ahsoka, he just wanted to help people,” Rex was certain of that. He knew the man. “This seems more…inspired by him. But if somebody is honoring his memory, maybe they knew him. Maybe they can help me find out what happened to him. Can you sense anything from it?”  
  
Kanan smirked, “No one I know. But it does seem like a message. And I know just who can decode it for us.”  
  
\--  
  
Atollon  
  
Sabine was in her quarters on the Ghost, alone, from what Rex could see. Kanan of course rang the com before just bursting in. Rex wondered why nobody seemed to do him the same consideration.  
  
Rex kept his hands behind his back, trying to seem polite in the girl’s room. Sabine always seemed to avoid talking to Rex. It had concerned him enough that he finally asked Kanan if he had done something wrong. Kanan explained that she was that way with most people outside the Ghost crew.  
  
Sabine had attachment issues. She’d been disowned by her mother from what Kanan said. Ursa Wren was a former member of Deathwatch who had, among other things, participated in that massacre of innocent villagers on Carlac that Ahsoka had witnessed. The Deathwatch had celebrated as the whole place burned. Rex was actually surprised how well-adjusted Sabine seemed despite her family.  
  
“Sabine, we need information. You know more about graffiti than anyone,” Kanan complimented.  
  
She gave him a look that indicated she was annoyed, “Well of COURSE.”  
  
“What can you tell us about this?” Rex showed her a holo-still of the graffiti from the ruins on Shimia. The light wasn’t the best, but the words were clear, in blue paint. Rex had made a plan of the complex and identified the wall where the painting was located.  
  
Sabine called up a holo-projection on her wrist com, “Usually tags of this type are invoking an inspiration. Someone they believe stood for something.” She typed some key words into a database search screen.  
  
Rex thought her description reminded him of the custom of displaying decoration on their armor was like that. Inspiring. They tended to be symbols of things they had survived. Like Fives with that Rishi eel. Or the 104th’s black armor decoration to honor the victims of the Malevolence at Abarafar. Imagery they used to draw strength from. Sometimes that could include people, like Waxer always wearing that drawing of the little Twi’lek girl he saved. Rex didn’t mention things like that around Sabine, even though he was sure she was a person who could share his interests. He always got vibes from her that told him to stay away or she’d break his thumbs. So he shut up and listened.  
  
“The tags are a kind of fandom, a way to tell people they are not alone. That other people learned from the same person and their story. It can be like a rallying cry,” Sabine explained.  
  
Sabine was making a name for herself as a leading artist of the Rebel movement. Her designs were very influential, Rex could see. He didn’t understand art much, himself, but he liked looking at it.  
  
Sabine scrolled through a series of images, “I think I might have seen that tag somewhere before….There!” she pointed at a hologram, it magnified. “This says the same tag was found in what the Imperial news service described as a gangland execution...”  
  
Rex sighed, “That doesn’t sound like Skywalker.”  
  
“...of the director of a group home that was selling the kids into slavery. The Empire claimed it was a dispute between the director and the Hutts about money,” Sabine wrinkled her nose and skimmed some other sources, “But it was enough to open up an investigation into such practices. Some of his accomplices served time.”  
  
“Then again…” Rex scratched his head. Skywalker had no patience with slavers.  
  
“And all over a weapons factory on Rothana,” Sabine continued.  
  
“What happened there?” Rex leaned in and squinted to read.  
  
Sabine scrolled through several purported images of the Rothana ruins. Among them was a rather large image of a pair of jaig eyes.  
  
“Now what is that doing there? I’m sure this IS a message,” Rex told them.  
  
“What is it?” Kanan asked.  
  
“It’s Mandalorian jaig eyes,” Sabine told him, skeptically.  
  
“What was someone trying to tell you?” Kanan read Rex’s intuition about the artwork.  
  
“But lots of people wear those,” Sabine was a little defensive. She thought Rex was being presumptuous.  
  
“It’s not reading tea leaves…” Kanan said, “But I do sense a connection to you.”  
  
“Fine, if you say so,” Sabine was dubious. “But jaig eyes doesn’t necessarily mean you. Lots of people use them just because they think it’s cool. I mean, anyone can put jaig eyes on their helmet, it doesn’t mean they’ve earned them.”  
  
Rex blinked a few times. He wasn’t sure whether or not he should say anything. He didn’t want to seem obnoxious by correcting her. Yet, she was accusing him of far greater disrespect than mansplaining to an expert. He started hesitantly, “I...I was awarded them by my Mandalorian trainers in the academy. I am the only one of my people who has them,” Rex knew he sounded defensive too. He winced internally, thinking he might have been disrespectful to her.  
  
Sabine’s face instead looked mortified, “Why haven’t you ever said that before? I was walking around here thinking you were appropriating…I’m so sorry, Rex! I get so mad to see those, it’s…considered offensive among my people to misuse sacred symbols. I just thought you didn’t know any better.”  
  
Rex didn’t feel any pleasure in being right somehow. She had assumed he was ignorant. That part hurt.  
  
It confused him a bit how Countess Wren’s daughter could be offended that someone had insulted or appropriated HER culture. But Rex knew better than to say that. It wouldn’t have been fair. Ursa Wren was the former member of Deathwatch, Sabine wasn’t. She might have learned some messed up things from being raised by a war criminal. But Rex of all people knew you couldn’t judge people by their upbringings.  
  
Rex just let it pass, “For whatever reason, someone seems to have been at least invoking us. I need to find out who destroyed that factory and why.”  
  
\--  
  
Rex had a duffle packed with winter gear and Hera had offered to loan him the Phantom 2. He was changing the fluids and running a point check to make sure the equipment was in order and watching the Ghost crew drama.  
  
Zeb’s stomach gargled menacingly, “I don’t feel so well.”  
  
“You’re the one who ate all that cheese in one sitting because you didn’t feel like sharing,” Ezra scolded. “You got what was coming to you.”  
  
“What’s going on, guys?” Hera asked.  
  
Ezra was packing gear for a camping trip with Kanan and Sabine. “I’m glad to be sleeping outdoors for a few days. This guy is having a massive gas attack and I just can’t be in our cabin with him.”  
  
Rex cracked up involuntarily.  
  
Hera pulled a face, “I was going to ask him if he wanted to come with me. But never mind then. I’ll conscript other volunteers.”  
  
Hera went over to Rex, “How is it going?”  
  
“I don’t know what I’ll find, but there might be someone worth having on our side,” Rex justified himself. But in truth, the mission was no more personal than Ezra’s side quests to Lothal, so Rex reminded himself to stop feeling like he had to apologize for himself all the time.  
  
Hera rolled her eyes, “I have to go recruit ‘volunteers’ for a job. One of the eternal questions of command. How do you get people to help you willingly?”  
  
Rex looked around and as luck would have it, Wedge and Hobbie were passing by. Rex knew the difference between busy and trying to look busy. He’d been a commanding officer, he knew how to recruit for a mission.  
  
“Wedge! Derek! Get in the ship, we’re going to Biscuit Baron!” he yelled.  
  
They practically toppled each other over trying to get there so fast.  
  
“Have to try that one,” Hera muttered.  
  
Rex made good on his offer and went to the fly through, he knew where there was a space station that had one on the way out to the Quiberon Sector. He let the pilots pick the music for the trip. That was a mistake. They were into some Trandoshan Post Rock. But they did do all of the flying so Rex could look over his collection of briefing reports for information about planetary conditions and checked and double checked all the gear. And get a nap.  
  
Rothana  
  
“Well, the coordinates they give on the holo-net are close,” Wedge turned on the anterior lights. It was night on this side of the planet.  
  
“Are you sure we’re supposed to be in here?” Hobbie worried.  
  
Wedge cocked an eyebrow, “Didn’t you ever trespass back home? Go in abandoned buildings? Commit minor acts of vandalism and theft? Steal from construction sites? We used to do that all the time at the shipyards on Corellia.”  
  
“What for?” Hobbie asked.  
  
“I don’t know, break in for the thrill. To have a drink or a smoke, impress a girl, wreck stuff, dance,” Wedge explained.  
  
“I’m from Raltiir,” Hobbie told him, as if that somehow explained his ignorance on nearly everything.  
  
“Dance?” Rex asked.  
  
Suddenly a factory spire became visible in the dark and driving snow. Wedge swerved suddenly to avoid it, but he had to stabilize by pulling into a spiral. He leveled out and decelerated near the ground inside the ruin.  
  
They landed with a thud, most of which was lost in the sound of the wind.  
  
Rex stood up, “Wedge, you run diagnostics, make sure the ship is in flying order. We don’t know what’s down here. The holo-net says the Empire wants to discourage visitors, we might have tripped some security beacon. So stay out of sight. Run on minimal systems.”  
  
“Sir, yes, sir,” Wedge saluted.  
  
“What do I do?” Hobbie asked.  
  
“We are going outside,” Rex tossed him a helmet with a snow shield.  
  
They descended the ramp to merciless wind and sideways snow. Rex had his pistols drawn, but he wasn’t sure how well he’d be able to see a threat, never mind aim properly while trudging in those boots. But having the guns made him feel secure nevertheless.  
  
Rex yelled over the helmet coms to compete with the howling wind, “There is a building over there!”  
  
They trudged their way across what might once have been a street. Rex recognized the streetlights as standard Republic fixtures in their pre-fabricated construction during the war. A colony.  
  
Before and during the war, Rothana had been known for its factories, which attracted Republic citizens from rural worlds looking for work. Because of the climate, the colonies had consisted of settlements built within the confines of shield domes. The shield on this one had been destroyed.  
  
After the war, the planet’s economy had been decimated when the military contracts dried up and the jobs went to cheaper places. Rex had heard most of the planet had been abandoned. But the factory looming at the center of this city was Imperial design. The place had converted purpose.  
  
There were also a series of snow mounds that were roughly the same size, scattered about up the street. As the wind tossed the snow about around them, the light on the mounds flickered making them seem as if vapor was rising from them, dancing and moving.  
  
Rex and Hobbie looked up at an apartment building. Hobbie looked vaguely horrified when Rex shot out the window and beckoned him to come in.  
  
They climbed through. Inside, it was quiet. Room after room they explored was some type of barracks typical of those that housed workers in factories. Lots of people, crowded in together. All possessions seemed to have been left behind. Everything seemed repaired or repurposed in ingenious ways, like a whole city patched together out of small pieces.  
  
Rex played detective a bit, deducing that the character of the place was one of long confinement with nothing coming in or out. The factory was probably for forced labor. A prison, then. Among the personal possessions, Rex found several tin cups that had a distinctive appearance. He picked one up from its icy perch on a shelf. The stamp on the underside read, ‘Royal Kaminoan Cloning Facility’.  
  
“What is this place,” Hobbie asked.  
  
“A hiding place for a dirty little secret,” Rex replied, “They were clones,” he held up the cup, “My brothers. Aside from that I don’t know anything else but they were here before, they’re not here now.” Rex knew a few cups would not be enough to help Senator Organa open any kind of investigation. Rex surprised himself when he found he didn’t want him to. He was with Saw on this one. He didn’t need any more proof for himself that the Empire had done something awful to his people. He didn’t need to build a case, he needed answers.  
  
The presence of clones proved something, Rex thought. Someone was using Skywalker’s name to make a statement. They agreed with whatever it was they thought he stood for. Skywalker always said, there were things that absolutely couldn’t be tolerated. The hit on the group home that was selling the children, the hit on the prison on Shimia, this place. Someone wanted the Empire to know that they saw all that. And they would not let it go.  
  
“Wait, you’re a clone?” Hobbie looked a little overwhelmed interrupting Rex’s train of thought. “I didn’t know you were a clone.”  
  
That gave Rex pause, “What did you think I was?”  
  
“Like...a normal guy?” Hobbie struggled, “I never thought I’d seen a clone... you’re not mentally retarded...”  
  
Rex shook his head, “Damnit Derek, I don’t have time to deal with this now.” Rex was curious enough to be distracted, though, giving Hobbie the side eye under his snow shield.  
  
They ventured back out into the snow. Rex noted a few footprints of the native ungulates, the six legged arctic horny whelmers. Rex muttered under his breath remembering a thing, “Karking Wolffe.”  
  
Rex looked up and realized the winds had calmed. It was merely snowing large flakes out of the bottomless night sky. He looked off up the street and realized those mounds he’d seen earlier were…human sized. Rex walked over to the closest one. Curiously, he brushed off the snow and stumbled back in shock. His own face looked up at him frozen and lifeless, covered in strange tattoos. He investigated a few more, running off down the street. Many had serious injuries, all were dressed in prison uniforms without any winter gear.  
  
Hobbie had run after Rex, his body language under the snow armor seemed pretty spooked.  
  
“They are clones alright,” Rex looked around. “They seem to have been facing…,” he looked at their poses, “No, running, trying to get that way. Trying to get away…escape! They couldn’t have expected to get far in this weather, but they must have had help. This is what Saw was talking about. Prison breaks, this was a big one. But who would do that for clones? Who could?” Suddenly Rex wasn’t so sure it wasn’t Skywalker after all.  
  
“So what now?” Hobbie shifted uneasily.  
  
\--  
  
They were looping back towards the shuttle. Suddenly, they turned a corner and Derek ran practically smack in the face with an Imperial probe droid.  
  
“Jam it’s signal!” Rex ordered and began the pursuit.  
  
Hobbie ran past Rex and fired at the probe, yelling. It turned and went down another street. Hobbie’s running left him no chance to aim. Rex patiently stopped shooting and pressed his wrist com to jam the signal, shaking his head slightly. Hobbie chased the droid up the next snow drift and into the spire of a building.  
  
“Damnit Derek, really? Stairs?” Rex grumbled. He reluctantly chased Derek up the many stairs in the stairwell. He didn’t hurry. His knees and hips weren’t exactly in running up stairs condition.  
  
Wedge’s voice chirped from the helmet com, “I have your position, I’ll pick you up on the roof of the building, guys! Just as soon as I have us defrosted.”  
  
“We’ll make it!” Rex could hear Hobbie a few floors above on the stairwell, still yelling at the probe droid, firing his blaster, and missing. Rex trudged, shaking his head and cursing in a low purr.  
  
“I think I’ve almost got it,” Hobbie’s voice sounded over the com. The sound of blaster fire was in the background. “I think I’ve got the trajectory...no…grrrrr! Why!?”  
  
“Damnit Derek,” Rex’s voice was on the com.  
  
Hobbie stood on the roof and clutched his blaster with two hands, firing at the probe and screaming, “Why! Won’t! You! Die!”  
  
Then the probe exploded in front of Hobbie. He thought for a moment he might have discovered Force abilities. Then he turned to see Rex behind him at the exit to the stairwell. Rex’s stance and gestures were of tired exasperation. He’d hit the probe as easily as point at it. Hobbie had cowered slightly at the explosion.  
  
Wedge arrived right after, but Rex didn’t feel the need to tell him the story. Hobbie looked grateful. Rex didn’t have any trouble getting Hobbie to volunteer for target practice when it was assigned afterwards.  
  
\--  
  
Rex had a weird dream.  
  
He was back on Kamino in the cafeteria kitchen, with his batchmates, reading to them. Rex’s batchmates, the other clones that he’d been incubated with in his first year, were all branded defective because of physical deformities. Therefore, they were sent to work in facility maintenance. His batchmates all worked in the same kitchen as they were growing up. When academy classes were over for the day and the dinner served, Rex had often read to them as they cleaned up. Just school textbooks in reality. In the dream, it was a real paper storybook with color pictures.  
  
“Then the witch said, ‘I’m going to kill you!’ and she chopped the child into pieces and buried her,” Rex’s young dream-self read.  
  
“She?” one of the batch mates asked.  
  
“Yeah, a female,” Dream Rex explained, “The witch is female, the child is female. And then next, a tree sprouted.”  
  
“Tree?” one of Rex’s brothers interrupted. Rex found it hard to see him to tell which one.  
  
“Wait, what’s buried?” another asked.  
  
Rex sighed and went on, “Then another child who was working as a herder…”  
  
“Herder?”  
  
“Someone who takes care of animals,” Rex replied.  
  
“Can anyone do that, that sounds fun,” a brother asked.  
  
Rex went on, “He saw a femur sticking out from the dirt, so he cut it into a flute.”  
  
“Flute?”  
  
“A musical instrument,” Rex answered.  
  
“Musical?” the brothers’ questions seemed never ending.  
  
Rex continued stubbornly, “But whenever he would play it, it would only sing a song about how the little girl was murdered and by whom,” Rex finally reached an important part of the story, he thought.  
  
“Wait, you didn’t explain what dirt is?” a voice reminded.  
  
Rex grew frustrated, so he cut the story short, “Everyone in the village got sick of hearing that song, so they broke the flute, the end,” Dream Rex closed the book.  
  
Rex thought the dream felt strange. He would never have lost his temper at them in life. His batch mates had been made to remain on Kamino working as maintenance clones. They weren’t educated, they never saw anywhere else before they died. It frustrated Rex how unfair that was.  
  
After the dream, he lay awake thinking. Those brothers’ corpses on Rothana displayed a lot of injuries. They had been mistreated, maybe their whole lives.  
  
“One of the lucky ones,” Rex said to himself, wishing he could see Ahsoka again. He felt like he needed her help trying to figure out how all the parts were connected.  
  
\--  
  
Rex ran into Fenn Rau at the base the next day. He was sporting a fancy new armor set.  
  
Rau actually smiled when he slapped Rex’s hand. “Well, you were right after all, Alor’ad. It looks like I will be joining the Rebellion.”  
  
“I always knew you were too smart to stick with the losing side,” Rex joked.  
  
“I spoke to some of the survivors, what few there were. There was one man who swore he saw your friend at the spaceport talking to a smuggler about what he’d accept as currency. He whispered something and she gave him a dose of hot sauce in the face,” Rau gripped his chin.  
  
“That’s my girl,” Rex choked a bit. No way to find the smuggler who actually did take her. Rex knew he’d be up at night worrying about her.  
  
“I’m sorry I don’t have time to help you just now, we have some crucial things to deal with on Mandalore,” Rau begged off.  
  
Yeah they did. Former Deathwatch war criminal Ursa Wren had joined forces with Rau rallying for a war to ‘Take Back Mandalore for the Mandalorians’. It made Rex cringe a little. He was glad Alis wasn’t fighting it, though.  
  
She was out there somewhere, on her own with no one else to help her. Rex hoped he’d given her enough skills. Presumably, she could fight, Mandalorians taught their young to defend themselves. But she was sheltered. He hoped she didn’t mistakenly trust the wrong people.


	3. Nothing at All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wolffe attempts to provide

Seelos  
  
“Wooooooooolffe!” Gregor howled.  
  
Wolffe opened one eye. He couldn’t ignore Gregor, but he didn’t want to be awake either, “What,” his voice whispered loudly.  
  
“There’s a PERSON here! I think she might have snuck in through that faulty head hatch while we were sleeping like that vulture that time,” Gregor clenched and unclenched his fists nervously, “I TOLD you to fix that thing.”  
  
“You don’t remember? You brought her!” Wolffe argued, speaking in his normal loud voice.  
  
“I would have done no such thing. Don’t I know better than to pick up hitchhikers? Unlike SOME people,” Gregor randomly remembered another incident.  
  
Wolffe tried to bring him back on track, “You don’t remember yesterday? Your mail-order bride? The Imperials?”  
  
“Well, now that you mention it…no! Okay, NO! I think you’re tricking me,” Gregor looked at his scraped hands. “Did we have a scuffle?”  
  
“No, numb-wit. This is all karking Rex’s fault. We have to try to avoid Imperials now. Unlike ungrateful Rex, I don’t prefer a straight fight. Brother must be absolutely desperate for help if he’s asking us,” Wolffe batted his hand at Gregor in a gesture of slapping, rather than slapped him. Gregor flinched a little. “And since you don’t know what day it even is, I guess that’s up to me, like everything else.”  
  
“Here we go again with another ‘poor Wolffe’ rant,” Gregor grumbled, “Not everything has to be a whole speech.”  
  
“Um...good morning?” Alis was standing in the doorway.  
  
They both unconsciously snapped to attention. They weren’t sure how much she’d heard.  
  
“We need some breakfast,” Wolffe commanded.  
  
Gregor stormed off, “Uh...let me handle this, you’ll screw it up for sure, Commander Incompetent.”  
  
\--  
  
“Well, in Tipoca City, the highest ranking person we saw was the Prime Minister, Lama Su, but even he answered to somebody. I believe the proper title of the monarch was ‘King of the Sea’,” Wolffe told Alis.  
  
“I swear you make up more poodoo...” Gregor called from the counter they’d set up for food prep, “I’m pretty sure that’s the name of a variety of canned fish. I think the guy on the label had a big beard.”  
  
“Gregor doesn’t remember anything from growing up. So you’ll have to take my word for how absurd it was. Mostly it’s just the two of us so to break up the monotony we go by nicknames, which we change at random,” Wolffe was explaining to Alis how things worked around there, since she was going to be with them for at least a little while.  
  
They were all having breakfast in the walker because Wolffe decided the smoke from a fire outside would be seen and Gregor thought that actually did make sense. Gregor had taken out some things from a stash of rations he’d been hiding from Wolffe behind a wall panel next to the coolant pipes. Wolffe noticed, but he couldn’t say anything since they had a guest. Even he was wearing more of the pungent deodorant than usual.  
  
“This week, Gregor seems to think my name is Bossy Emo-pants, and I refer to him as De’stench Minister Jar Jar Stinks, because I am trying to shame him into washing better.”  
  
Alis laughed.  
  
“No, I’m the one who came up with that one, not you,” Gregor waved his spatula at Wolffe, “You just keep stealing it you putrid bastard.”  
  
Wolffe cocked his head, “Good showering facilities are hard to come by on Seelos. Truthfully, I suppose, we smell very similar. But even I notice him. He doesn’t do enough laundry.”  
  
“Shouldn’t that be ‘smell similarly’?” Gregor asked.  
  
“No, ‘smell similarly’ would be accurate if I were referring to the active verb ‘smell’, as in with your own nose, but ‘similar’ is an adjective, not an adverb, here it’s standing as the predicate nominative. It’s implied that ‘we smell similar’ means specifically we are being compared as ‘we smell like similar things’.”  
  
“We have the same nose, so we smell similarly in that sense too, I would assume,” Gregor pointed out.  
  
“Yes, I know we have the same nose but….never mind. Not worth getting drawn into this. He already doesn’t remember what he asked about. I don’t have time for mental masturbation,” Wolffe made the caf.  
  
“Don’t just…SAY…that in front of her…,” Gregor practically squealed.  
  
Alis laughed again.  
  
“Yes Gregor, I know it’s not polite to DISCUSS, such as personal habits and the like, but in this instance it’s a figurative expression…I...he ain’t listening,” Wolffe sighed.  
  
“Oh, I guess I don’t need much. I can lower my standards if there’s no judgment,” Alis shrugged. “Smell isn’t an issue, I live on a farm. I’ve shoveled my share of manure. And you should see the weird equipment they have there for masturbating livestock for breeding.”  
  
Wolffe cracked up. He loved farm humor.  
  
Gregor blushed, “Is...that...true?” Gregor got stuck trying to picture how such a thing would even work.  
  
Alis shrugged, “My guardians used to keep hunting shriek hawks. To breed them you use a hat to collect it.”  
  
Even Wolffe blushed, while choking on his own laughter.  
  
Wolffe didn’t think he should mention the fat pack of the healing herbs that their brother Cut had sent them. It kept the pain under much better control than the over the counter pills and Gregor couldn’t overdose on them. Still, Wolffe couldn’t help feeling ashamed of himself for using them, since he’d grown up in an era where younglings were constantly taught that users of that type of product were losers.  
  
Alis bound her braids close to her head with a kind of wire. Wolffe recognized it as the kind that Mandalorian girls wore that, when activated by a ring worn on the finger, it vibrated like a kind of mini blade. Not strong enough to lop of limbs, but it could be used to bifurcate boneless parts on a person like a cheese cutter. Good for taking off an ear or, in cases of attempted rape, the entire, or part of the, dangly bits.  
  
“I checked the Imperial channels for this sector, there is no record of an Imperial bounty on anyone for kidnapping you. But get this, Titus isn’t even an admiral like his thugs claimed. He was demoted after an incident near Del Zennis. This is probably his attempt to climb back up again. Titus probably doesn’t want to put this incident in the Imperial records because it makes him look like an idiot. For now, the true identity of the legendary Biggus Dickus has remained a mystery.”  
  
“But they are looking for me?” she had both her guns on already, strapped on her holsters. Wolffe didn’t know if he should take that personally or not. Was she still afraid of them, or did her family always eat breakfast with weapons? Her guardians were Mandalorian, so that was possible.  
  
Wolffe said, “Titus knows you tried to contact 7567, who might be his ticket to a promotion. But he doesn’t know why. Nobody else knows there is a connection between us and that number. Some people saw us buy you food, but for all they knew, we were trying to chat you up or something and nobody knows for sure we left together. So he has no reason to be looking for us. Titus only knows Rex is connected to you and your disappearance means they now have reason to believe he’s here. My bet, that woman is only looking for Rex to get to Ahsoka. I just KNEW she was going to cause us problems. And since shit slides downhill, here we are.”  
  
“Am I the shit?” Alis loudly whispered to Gregor.  
  
Wolffe ranted on, “Oh, but I’m the bad guy for trying to shield Rex all these years and keep him safe. It was ‘kark you, Wolffe’ at first opportunity. Now I gotta deal with their karking fish food anyway.”  
  
“Are you gonna be long with this particular ‘poor Wolffe’ rant, because food’s just about ready,” Gregor shouted over his shoulder.  
  
“I’m done. Now, I don’t think that woman will want to waste much more time on Seelos, it doesn’t make tactical sense. But who knows? ISB wasted three very expensive walkers and a few lives trying to arrest us before. I’d hate to be that poor Agent Kallus when he had to go back to his boss with his expense report. But he was coming to arrest actual Jedi, not us. I bet she’s never told him about Ahsoka. Titus will probably get his funding yanked once that woman gets bored or she gets sent somewhere else on a more credible lead. That’s only a matter of time, since Ahsoka has never been here, so it will be a dead end. Point is, I think we can wait them out a little. Any questions?”  
  
“Who are Ahsoka and Agent Kallus?” Gregor asked, bringing over a pan of re-hydrated eggs.  
  
“Oh for kark’s sake…,” Wolffe threw up his hands.  
  
“What? I’m just supposed to know?” Gregor served the food onto plates. Alis had already offered to do dishes, so Wolffe couldn’t really object. “You always talk like you’re on act four of a six act play.”  
  
“Actually, I wanted to know the same thing,” Alis muttered, taking a portion from the pan and covering them in hot sauce.  
  
“Focus on the now, please? Can we, children?” Wolffe pointed at Alis. “I can teach you to drive the AT-AT, which you’ll need to know if you have to take off without us some time. Can’t leave you helpless. Plus you can help with the driving.”  
  
Gregor went to the closet and got out two stolen jumpsuits for custodians in the fuel mining company’s facility. Seelos was dotted with small stations that mined for the Palpatine family’s energy company, Unlimited Power. Gregor threw them on the ledge where he was sitting and used them as a cushion as they ate. His back was aching a bit from the strain of the night before. He, of course, couldn’t remember why.  
  
Wolffe went over to the caf maker when it chirped. “Sorry, we only have two cups. I guess one of us has to drink from the carafe.”  
  
“Can I?” Alis asked.  
  
“Only if you tell me why you want to,” Wolffe joked.  
  
“Well, the Mandalorians, at least the ones on Concord Dawn, are very religiously conservative. They have all these restrictions about eating and drinking and how food is prepared. Once I used the wrong pan for something and this woman freaked at me and made me throw away the whole meal. Then she hit me for wasting food. She gave me this big long speech about how form must follow function. How there was a science to it, and how the ‘right’ way to do things was reflected in this order. Like she was some kind of expert on vessel shapes and classifications. So after that I used to carry around a spouted measuring cup as my personal drinking vessel. She asked my guardian to make me stop, but I told him it held water just the same, so he let me keep it.”  
  
“Do you know how much of archaeology is premised on her way of thinking?” Wolffe asked. “Any particular reason why a measuring cup?”  
  
“My mom and grandma were cooks. They never measured anything, but they’d use whatever was around to use to mix up batter or sauce or whatever. One of their suppliers to their restaurant gave cups like that away. Those measuring cups were cheap, so they had a lot of them. There were a lot of uses for them, drinking, mixing, pouring, teething ring, sippy cup, bathing the baby. When I was growing up they were everywhere in my house.”  
  
“See, I knew it, your reason for picking a cup was so much better than just doing what ‘wrong pan’ woman had,” Wolffe nodded and poured caf in the cups, then handed her the carafe, “But nonetheless cultural.”  
  
“Stop being silly, form has to follow function in some regards, you don’t want a drinking cup that’s too heavy to lift or a soup bowl that’s flat or whatnot. Now when I worked in a restaurant, I had a whole classification system for my cabinets…” Gregor started.  
  
“You worked in a restaurant?” Alis asked.  
  
“Yeah…I made all kinds of food,” Gregor sat down and handed out forks.  
  
“Now Gregor, can what you served there really be called ‘food’?” Wolffe accepted his cutlery.  
  
“For a guy who stuffs his face like you do, can you really pretend you have standards? Or that you ever did?” Gregor returned.  
  
“But enough about his love life,” Alis laughed wickedly. Gregor laughed too.  
  
Wolffe blushed nearly purple, “You are mean.”  
  
“Good one,” Gregor ate happily, looking up pictures on his datapad of a hawk breeding hat and snickering.  
  
Alis started on her breakfast, “Now if I’m going to be here, shouldn’t I try to contact my family to tell them I’m stuck and I’ll get back when I can?”  
  
Wolffe pulled at the left mutton chop a bit, “I don’t think you realize yet, the fewer people we have contact with the better. It definitely increases our chances of not dying.”  
  
The girl raised the eyebrows again, “So you’re saying what I did was a bad idea?”  
  
“For me? Probably. But you’re young. I forgive you,” Wolffe was sort of joking.  
  
“I didn’t say I was sorry,” she scowled down at her eggs.  
  
“Look, you did what you did and it probably at least saved your life. You don’t have to question whether or not it was the ‘right’ thing or about what would have happened if you’d stayed. It just means you know to trust your instincts. That’s good. You don’t have to listen to me, kid, but as far as I’m concerned watching over you has fallen to me. At least until someone more qualified can be found.”  
  
“That’s got to be better than having no one, I guess,” Gregor added, “He’s not bad, really. He can actually be very clever when he tries.”  
  
“You’re still breathing!” Wolffe offered in his defense, a little too savagely.  
  
Gregor didn’t look as if he knew what Wolffe was complaining about.  
  
Wolffe rolled his eyes. Which looked funny, since he only had an iris in one. It looked as if his organic eye was googling.“Now, as to your family on C.D., we can follow the news outlets from the com station. I haven’t seen anything yet. And if they are chasing you to find Rex, that’s a good sign he hasn’t been captured yet,” Wolffe hoped she would see he was trying to be optimistic, “So who knows? Right?”  
  
Instead, Alis slouched her shoulders. She was looking dangerously close to crying. But she stubbornly went back to her food.  
  
Gregor and Wolffe exchanged a glance that said they realized that this poor child didn’t seem to have ever been left on her own before.  
  
“We’ll think of something,” Wolffe said. Suddenly, he got worried that sounded predatory, since it sounded like dialogue one would say in a pornographic film just before the food delivery guy comes in for the threesome. So he stuffed his face quickly and stepped away from the table and went to go sit on top of the walker to have a smoke. He was suffocating in there feeling positive that no matter what he did, it was going to be wrong.  
  
–  
  
After a while, Wolffe thought the smell of the healing herbs had dissipated enough that the girl wouldn’t smell them, he decided to get started driving. He was a while pulling the head hatch open, like always. It just hadn’t sat right since the Jedi had cut it open. Wolffe had tried to reattach it, but the metal was mangled. Yet Gregor complained about it every time he saw it. Wolffe let loose a tirade of swears at the thing. Got out some anger. Took a deep breath, applied less force and instead jiggled the stupid thing from side to side until it came open.  
  
He took his place in the driver’s seat. To his surprise, Alis and Gregor joined him in the walker head.  
  
Gregor was talking, “Now the fambaa delight, it was just terrible. But that’s because we had to use canned fambaa. You can’t raise swamp creatures on a world like Abafar, there’s just not enough water, they’ll die. Still, that was one of our most frequently asked questions at the diner, ‘Do you use fresh fambaa, or canned?’ I was always like, ‘Well what do you think?’ Finally I would variously claim both, just to break up the monotony. It wasn’t until later on that I tried the real thing that I realized how much of a difference it makes.”  
  
Alis shook her head, “Oh no, the fresh really is the only way to go. You can still use frozen pastry, though, it works well, especially in hot weather when pastry dough becomes impossible to roll out. You brush it with a nice egg wash, no one can tell it’s not homemade.”  
  
“I’ll have to try that,” Gregor sat down in his chair, but turned to talk to her. As if he had access to frozen dough.  
  
Alis politely took a place behind, “So…what’s next on the agenda?”  
  
“We didn’t have time to shop for supplies. Tell me, kid, what’s your skill set?” Wolffe started up the machine.  
  
“Typical cadet stuff,” she shrugged.  
  
“What is your view on things like morality?” Wolffe asked.  
  
Alis was confused, “I don’t see how that’s relevant…”  
  
“Like, in general, we prefer not to steal because it’s risky, but if we have to, we prefer not to steal from individuals who can’t afford it,” Wolffe said importantly.  
  
‘Hah!’ thought Gregor. The only time clones didn’t steal was when some self-righteous brother decided that an honest living slinging joopa was a better idea than hustling, so Wolffe had always said. They had done routines before, often over Rex’s objections, because even Rex realized that stealing was better than starving and a few times it did save them from that. Gregor thought it sounded like Wolffe was trying to be all upright in front of the little girl, though, like there was some kind of honor code to it. The only code really was, if you’re hungry, make sure you eat. If you don’t want to die, make sure you live. It was simple, but the way it was for them, those two things made most of the decisions for them.  
  
“Oh...you mean what are my principles? What won’t I do?” she asked, sounding nervous.  
  
“Answer it any way you want. If you have any religious underpinnings that guide you, for instance,” Wolffe liked to talk after a smoke. “Have you ever heard the story of Arasuum and Kad Ha’rangir?”  
  
“I went to temple every week back on Concord Dawn. It’s all pretty boring if you ask me,” Alis admitted.  
  
“Then somebody didn’t tell it right. You probably got the bowdlerized version. None of the sex but all the sick violence like it’s nothing,” Wolffe scratched behind his ear.  
  
“Why would I like a version with both sex and violence better?”  
  
“I don’t believe in pretending things don’t exist by not portraying them. People told the old stories to children a long time ago. So there was a time when we didn’t think they were so sensitive. But then, the same people who are pro-bowdlerization are the ones who characterize ancient people as child-like.”  
  
“Oh here he goes….” Gregor muttered.  
  
“Now back in MY day,” Wolffe began, “We had psychological and physical abuse as part of the education curriculum. Our only religious instruction was that something called, ‘The Republic’ was everything good, and ‘The Enemy,’ was everything bad. They were locked in this duel. But we were the secret weapon that was going to win the war for ‘Greater Good,’ which was a term taken from part of the Jedi Principles. So by our third year, when they brought in the Mandalorian combat trainers. Those guys were mostly staunch followers of the Decree of Mandalore the Indomitable. Since the home world had been taken over by pacifists who tended to atheism, exiles, like the guys who taught us, tended to be religious fanatics. So they told us the old stories. We thought it was interesting, the similarities. We’d been taught one story, but we didn’t know there were different points of view. They were allowed to instruct us, just as long as it was taught as a ‘mythology’ that didn’t interfere with our loyalty programming. But it was natural, we synchretized their stuff with ours.”  
  
“And the versions they taught weren’t…bowdlerized?” Alis asked.  
  
“Hell no, original texts in Mando’a. It was some deep shit, from what I could tell,” Wolffe shrugged.  
  
“You didn’t study it first hand?”  
  
“My bunk adjacent, Cody, studied it. It’s messed up, gods and monsters, descriptions of times and places that don’t exist anymore and beings bigger than we can imagine. People think these are metaphors, but nobody agrees about what for. Then there were stories about people they wanted to remember. Everybody goes around massacring each other and whoever wins says it was because that’s how the gods wanted it. So much sexual violence that you barely register it as odd after a while. I thought that might be a wrong kind of moral system to be passing down.”  
  
“Most Mandalorians don’t take it literally that we should live like they lived,” Alis defended.  
  
“Deathwatch was still doing things like taking prisoners from peaceful villages for the purpose of cooking, serving and forcible sexual servicing. Then massacring said villages for no reason at all. This was just twenty years ago. They claimed their superiority over the villagers must be their divine right because if they didn’t have the favor of the gods, they would not have been given the power to do that. I think it is fair to say that these guys could do with some kind of new religious decree or pacifist atheist revolution to make them stop glorifying violence so much by revering a more violent time.”  
  
“You’ve got a lot to say,” Alis observed.  
  
“I’m just getting started!” Wolffe looked at his brother, “Should we show her one of our routines?”  
  
Gregor nodded.  
  
Wolffe started, then he and Gregor automatically launched into a singing routine that they’d obviously been practicing for years. It was an advertising jingle that had been popular on Coruscant during the late war. They did harmonies.  
  
Alis shrieked with laughter like a child in front of an animated holo-vid.  
  
Wolffe then launched in to a silly voice of a ‘host’ character with a Faustian accent, as ‘Dr. Klaus’. He interviewed Gregor about his personal view of the cosmos. Gregor’s metaphor was a snake with a head like a roaring nexu. Every part of the creature was a metaphor for the order of the perceived universe. Dr. Klaus over-pronounced ‘cloaca’ several times, and laughed like he found it titillating. They sang a duet called, ‘Demiurge’ talking about everything the figure had made. Wolffe stayed in the accent. They finished with jazz hands.  
  
Alis laughed until she got the hiccups. She clapped as they finished the number, “I didn’t know clones sang?”  
  
“Fett boys don’t dance, as the saying goes, we didn’t say anything about not singing. Do you like to sing? I know duets,” Wolffe seemed excited.  
  
Gregor knew if she said yes, he was never going to get a word in edgewise.  
  
“I’m looking forward to hearing this ‘Yub Nub,” she remembered.  
  
–  
  
“Now, I’m going to tell you the un-bowdlerized truth that some guys would easily decide that needing money meant that they should pimp you out. Then they’d take the money and get you off world to somewhere where pimping you out would be more profitable,” Wolffe told her.  
  
“WOLFFE! Don’t just SAY...” Gregor squealed.  
  
“No, I know a LOT of girls this happened to,” Wolffe defended.  
  
“Thirty-Two!” Gregor argued back.  
  
Wolffe was letting Alis drive, “I’m just saying, we will never do that. It’s against everything I believe.”  
  
“If you’re trying to get me to trust you, you are doing a terrible job,” Alis ground the gears and winced, then corrected, “Look, I’m in cadet training. I know how to take orders. I will learn whatever skills you can teach me. I can be a soldier, I don’t just have to be taken care of,” Alis protested.  
  
“Oh, I expect you to,” Wolffe winced internally, since he thought it sounded predatory.  
  
“What do you want me to do? Tell a guy in a bar I’m thirteen and if he asks to buy me, I bring him around the corner, you shoot him. We take his money,” Alis suggested.  
  
“O...kay….waaaaaay darker than I was going to go. But you’re thinking. Please tell me that is not how you got yourself here,” Wolffe gave her the side eye, but as she was on the side of his prosthesis, she couldn’t tell he was looking at her.  
  
“No. I was joking. I’ve never killed anybody,” she laughed nervously. “Not unless you count livestock,”  
  
Gregor nodded, “Same thing.”  
  
Wolffe knew he was going to have nightmares of the two of them butchering him while wearing falcon breeding collection hats. His imagination was highly suggestible.  
  
“Aside from joopa, we don’t have anything to eat. So we’ll have to improvise. I think we need to get out our badges,” Wolffe grabbed the fake id tin and handed it to Gregor.  
  
“Badges! We don’t need no stinking badges!” Gregor said in a Toydarian accent. It was something from a holo-vid, so Wolffe thought.  
  
Gregor pulled out two company id’s for the fuel mine near a relatively nearby spaceport. The energy company’s fuel mining stations were no more than camps surrounded by fences. Some had been abandoned for low productivity, others chugged along. All had supply warehouses.  
  
\--  
  
They parked the walker a good distance away.  
  
“Standard safety protocol in this galaxy is that children stay behind and wait, Alis," Wolffe explained, deliberately trying not to remember that story Kenobi had told about when his Master Jinn had tried that with Skywalker. "At least then, if they capture us, you still have a chance to run. And it’s good faith. We’re not kidnapping you. You’re not being guarded and held against your will,” Wolffe put his hand on his chest humbly.  
  
“Plausible deniability. They might not connect us right away,” Alis nodded.  
  
“You’re learning,” Wolffe nodded back.  
  
“Dealing with obtrusive authority isn’t new to me. You know…despite what a hick I look like,” she brushed some hair behind her ear. “I lived in an Imperial workhouse for three years. If you don’t steal food, you starve.”  
  
“Noted,” Wolffe nodded, “We’re just going to go in, make the rounds of a trash run in the warehouse, walk out with a palette full of trash bags filled with supplies. You guard our getaway. We’ll need to get out of here fast if we’re caught.”  
  
Alis didn’t think she’d have much to do while Wolffe and Gregor went into the facility, so she set up some garbage for a target practice in the shade below the walker. She figured it was less embarrassing if she didn’t have anyone around to watch her miss.  
  
Gregor climbed down the ladder in his UP jumpsuit, “Have you ever considered using a smaller set of blasters? It might help with your accuracy if you used something your wrists could support better.”  
  
“Well, yeah, but cadets have to provide their own hardware. I don’t exactly have a trust fund, for custom weapons,” Alis realized she was being defensive. But she was tired of being made fun of for her shoddy equipment. Her clan didn’t have much money and what little they had couldn’t be spent on a foster child. She got what they had to spare. The fact that they were educating her at all was an act of charity.  
  
Wolffe hopped off the ladder, “Just take some out of the drawer.”  
  
“You can use anything you want, just don’t mess up my organizational system,” Gregor pointed a finger seriously.  
  
“What system? Gun drawer, armor drawer, ammunition drawer. Not a big deal, yeesh,” Wolffe shook his head, “But I notice you keep these jumpsuits in the closet.”  
  
“That is the cushion closet. I keep them there because they make good cushions and that’s what we use them for most of the time,” Gregor corrected.  
  
“Can’t argue with that,” Alis shook her head.  
  
–  
  
Wolffe and Gregor drudged through the various gates into the factory, flashing their badges at bored security guards. They were mostly dozing or watching their screens.  
  
Wolffe and Gregor kept their faces downcast to avoid camera scans, but walked around for a while collecting an anti-grav palette and some large trash bags. Gregor also loaded some cleaning products from the maintenance supply closet. Wolffe discreetly unloaded the stuff in spray cans, worried about the dangers of huffing. Not that he assumed Alis or Gregor would do any, Wolffe didn’t think he needed the temptation around himself. They left the maintenance area and pushed the palette towards the main warehouse for supplies.  
  
“I don’t remember if she said anything negative about you,” Gregor answered a question Wolffe had asked half an hour before, “And, for your information, when I have conversations with other people, I don’t waste a ton of time talking about you. That’s just in your imagination, you narcissist.”  
  
“Sorry I asked,” Wolffe grumbled.  
  
“You’re not the bright center to the universe, you know,” Gregor grumbled back.  
  
“FINE!” Wolffe whispered loudly, “So what we getting?”  
  
“I don’t know? What do females eat?” Gregor wondered.  
  
“Same things as men,” Wolffe thought Gregor was being deliberately ridiculous, “I thought you worked in a restaurant.”  
  
“Well then why are all the advertisements for food for women about how low calorie it is?” Gregor asked, “Isn’t that the goal? To take in nothing at all?”  
  
Wolffe shook his head in a bit of disbelief.  
  
The security in the food warehouse were droids in order to reduce on the job theft. Droids didn’t eat. The brothers approached the security droid. It put its gun hand up and clicked at them.  
  
“Just here to collect the trash,” Wolffe told it.  
  
It clicked back.  
  
“Well you wouldn’t exactly know if any of the food in there had turned, would you? You can’t smell. Stuff’s probably been rotting for weeks, or gone all moldy or maggoty, or full of animal droppings,” Wolffe sounded aggravated.  
  
The droid waved him through, clicking a laugh at their misfortune. Security droids were programmed with the lowest possible empathy setting, so they were often full of schadenfreude.  
  
Wolffe shouted back towards the droids, “Man, I love the Empire, the job stinks, so give it to the people who can smell. Hail the infinite wisdom of the Emperor!” Droids couldn’t detect the sarcasm, so they read it as an employee with a high level of satisfaction. Any human monitoring the footage would have registered him as no more disgruntled than anyone else in that miserable place. And since Gregor and Wolffe’s badge identities only appeared complaining at the facility one or two days a year, their dissatisfaction statistics were among the lowest monitored in the factory. Despite the fact that security and human resources were in the same facility, they never communicated, so the two offices never put it together that those guys didn’t match the id pictures in the files.  
  
Once they were inside the cavernous warehouse, Gregor pressed on with the conversation, “But if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say she doesn’t like you at all. And if I had to choose between the two of you...”  
  
“You don’t like me either,” Wolffe rolled his eyes. Wolffe somehow felt like the odd Sith out on the Rule of Two.  
  
Wolffe and Gregor went through the aisles of the warehouse, making sure to empty some of their own trash, so that the maggot infestations would give them an excuse to come back the next time they needed food.  
  
“Now she and I were talking about it and we decided the best thing is to make up whole casseroles at once and then we can cover them and set them next to the coolant pipes behind the wall panel. They’ll stay frozen and we can heat them up as needed. So where can we get covered containers?” Gregor shoveled several bags of dried noodles into his trash bag.  
  
“We are also here to get contraband to sell,” Wolffe grabbed packets of dehydrated rations, sauces and snacks. The possible markup was always the highest on things that were the most processed. They passed by a shelf that had sacks of sugar. Wolffe looked longingly, but he just knew if he had too much of it, he’d be distilling again in no time. It was a shame, the markup on alcohol was consistently high.  
  
Gregor found a stash of prophylactics near the containers and slipped that on the palette when Wolffe was finding a measuring cup as a gift for Alis. Gregor wasn’t wrong, the markup for those was high, but Wolffe didn’t know it was there.  
  
When the bags were packed, they went out the exit of the warehouse where Wolffe cut the small wire that sounded the physical alarm on a previous visit. No one had noticed it yet. They walked back towards the walker.  
  
\--  
  
Alis felt a tap on her shoulder. It was not polite, but hard enough to hurt. She turned and was suddenly startled by the men standing beside her. She pulled her earphones out and stood very still.  
  
“Is this a random inspection?” one man asked. They were dressed in their security uniforms for the facility. She remembered the walker. “Where is your supervisor?”  
  
Alis thought fast, looking up at the walker briefly, “Uh...yes.” She looked down at her uniform. She hadn’t worn any of her armor pieces, so she guessed she passed for a driver in a flight suit.  
  
“Agents are already inspecting the perimeter. They’ll do the surprise inspection of the facility later on today,” Alis began to spin a tale, “If you hurry, you can go and get your section in top shape for inspection.” Alis winced internally and vowed to stop using the word ‘inspection’.  
  
The first man laughed, “Time enough for us to get drunk on the job so we’re fired and get sent back to the Core,” he turned to address Alis, “What about you, you want to have a drink with us?”  
  
Alis tried to politely decline, “I’m on duty.” She went back to target practice. Her new pistols ‘from the drawer’ were actually easier to hold steady.  
  
She grew nervous when the men didn’t leave right away.  
  
“So what’s your name?” one asked, “You got a boyfriend? Cute boyfriend?”  
  
“I find this dialogue creepy,” Alis scowled at him, “My situation is none of your business.” She was relieved to see Wolffe and Gregor headed back with the palette. She shifted gears quickly, “OY! You there! What are you up to!”  
  
Gregor looked around confused. Wolffe saw the security guys, so he didn’t say a thing.  
  
“I bet you heard about the surprise inspection and you’re trying to dump your contraband before you get inspected. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to come with me,” Alis affected her best impression of the prison warden of her old workhouse.  
  
“Uh…,” Wolffe had obviously caught on. He put his hands up, “It’s...it’s not mine….”  
  
“A likely story!” Alis pointed a blaster. She opened the top bag and emptied the prophylactics onto the sand.  
  
The security guys took out their blasters, “Can we assist? They look dangerous.”  
  
“Isn’t there something you were going to do? This is my collar,” Alis was now mixing it with a character from a holo-net program about police, “Piss off before I take you in with them.”  
  
They pissed off to go get drunk. No Imperials ever came to inspect the facility, so the guards never got caught. They were afraid to mention the incident to anyone because it was so strange. They never could manage to get fired, no matter what they did.


End file.
